The Himalaya Regional Land Cover Database: Land Cover in Nepal, Bhutan, Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, China, and Myanmar

Includes complete landcover data for Nepal and Bhutan, with partial data for Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, China and Myanmar.
Can be found at the following link: http://www.fao.org/geonetwork/srv/en/main.home?uuid=46d3c2ef-72c3-4f96-8...
The purpose of the land cover database is to provide essential basic information natural resource assessment and management, environmental modelling, and decision-making and policy formulation for a sustainable land management. The strategy adopted combines the need to develop new tools and methodologies for land cover mapping with the necessity to strengthen the capacity of developing countries to produce, manage and distribute spatial information on environmental resources.
The land cover was interpreted from LANDSAT imagery acquired mainly in the period 2000-2005. Current validation was made from ancillary data and free high resolution historical imagery. The field work verification it is planned shortly. Countries involved in the mapping are going to control the classes created/interpretation performed and update the database with new classes according to a more detailed interpretation scale (1:100 000).</